Amazon announces that they will be making free-to-play social games

From the totally-out-of-left-field-but-maybe-not-if-you-think-about-it department, Amazon is now a games studio, apparently. This move comes just as some sour news from the social and mobile games business breaks, include Zynga's miserable situation of late and news of publishers and developers pulling back from the mobile and social games categories. While it's hard to understand why Amazon would make a move like this at a time like this, it's not difficult to see the connection to its popular book publishing enterprise, given that their first family-friendly game takes players into classic books like Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, and King Arthur. It will be interesting to see where this leads and if more projects are forthcoming from the studio.